Cramer: You’re Getting Warmer

…or is it me warming to Jim Cramer, just a little bit.

When I come to work each day, whether as a commentator for TheStreet.com or a host of Mad Money With Jim Cramer, I have only one thought in mind: helping people with their money.

Okay, that part is not entirely accurate if ye be judged by your results. You’re an entertainer whose stock-picking advice at least has been shown to be dead on if one’s goal is to generate losses.

I fight to help viewers and readers make and preserve capital. I fight for their 401(k)s, for their 529s and their IRAs. I fight for their annuities and for their life insurance policies. I fight for their profits, trading and investing. And in this horrible market, I fight to keep their losses to a minimum by having some good dividend-yielding stocks from different sectors, some bonds, some gold and some cash.

Sorry Jim, I’m not a fan. Jim Cramer: A Stream of Uncalibrated Opinion

I work with real clients and real money, and people like you and Suze only confuse my clients more and make my job harder.

…but despite all that, I’m warming up to you of late:

Limbaugh’s dead right. I am a fight-not-flight guy, so I was on my hackles when I heard White Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ answer to a question about my pointed criticism of the president on multiple venues, including the Today Show.

Well, in case you didn’t know this Jim, Gibbs is a pompous ass and likely knows less about the market and economics than his boss.

“I’m not entirely sure what he’s pointing to to make some of the statements,” Gibbs said about my point that President Obama’s budget may be one of the great wealth destroyers of all time. “And you can go back and look at any number of statements he’s made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too.”

Huh? Backup? Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world’s morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people.

The market’s the effect; much of what the president is fighting for is the cause. The market’s signal can’t be ignored. It’s too palpable, too predictive to be ignored, despite the prattle that the market’s predicted far more recessions than we have.

Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He’s done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes.

Jim, your stock picks may be right less than half the time, but you are 100% correct today.

Just don’t throw a chair at the President. That’d be bad.

3 thoughts on “Cramer: You’re Getting Warmer

  1. You might be amused by the riff on CNBC’s news reporting done on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show regarding media business opinions….

    Enjoy! (I definitely did. One of the best laughs I’ve had in ages.)

  2. Your link took me to the Steward website, but all I seemed able to get were playbacks of tv commercials, not the Stewart bit. (Not your link that was at fault, their site was the problem).

    Best guess, we are referring to the same material.

    First line out of Walter Heller’s mouth when I had him for macro econ was that all the economists in the world, laid end to end, still couldn’t reach a conclusion. He’s long gone, but I think of that and other comments on the every day as I listen to the latest economic predictions.

    In the “dead guys” department – I really miss having Rukeyser and Wall Street Week around for insight into current events. I bet his bones are doing a few rpms….

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